EarthWideTribehttp://earthwidetribe.com
...the musings of Melissa Billington, creatrix of MYOGA Freedom Online Yoga School & PocaHAUNTus--shapeshifting history into HerStory, & co-host of WhitePeople Whispering, as she connects with the land, water and fellow critters round this glorious globe!Mon, 21 May 2018 02:29:08 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.9http://earthwidetribe.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cropped-cropped-cropped-cropped-pocahauntus3-e1461810484108-32x32.jpgEarthWideTribehttp://earthwidetribe.com
3232first world problemshttp://earthwidetribe.com/first-world-problems/
http://earthwidetribe.com/first-world-problems/#commentsThu, 10 May 2018 23:15:59 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1712I love this phrase. (I don’t love that it cuts the world apart into an economic & demographic hierarchy, but I do love how it can be used in this instance to bridge a gap…) In my search these past few years for ‘what is funny?’ a phrase like this is a treasure to stumble upon. It does what I am asking Comedy to do, what I deem “good” comedy is capable of — to communicate the truth in a way that people actually enjoy the process of grok-ing in the depth & breadth of said truth.

A dilemma I know I face, & that I hear others ‘on the path’ (of “waking up”) describe in their own lives, is how to balance my own “woke-ness” with the varying levels of awakened-ness surrounding me. What to say, if anything, about the ab/use of water, the blatant racism, the unconscious perpetuation of genocide, poverty, ecocide, etc. etc. etc. that I am suddenly awake to all around me, even among those I thought I knew?

How much do I say? Or do I instead focus on portraying the worldview-I’ve-woken-up-to through my actions? How have my values seemed to shift from those I call my family? What’s the balance between loyalty to those I love (or thought I did, but now I even question ‘love’) & my alignment with another way of Be-ing? I feel I’m operating from a different set of ethics. Is that true?

As part of the podcast that Chas Jewett & I put together, based on her phrase & practice of “whitepeoplewhispering”, we interviewed Sara Thomsen who was another of the core walkers on the Missouri River prayer walk. One night after a long day of walking & over some omelettes I had made in our RV kitchen, Sara shared something with us that is a beautiful example of dancing between “them” and “us”, between “then” & “now”. I think of this letter she crafted as ‘elegant’ because she aligned on the shared values with her family & then went on to point out the dissonance, as she experienced it, between those values & their actions. The incongruence between their stated beliefs and their actions, particularly in relation to voting in a new US president, made her so ill-at-ease that her love of justice came face to face with her love for her family. You can read that letter here on the WPW blog page. There’s a link there to listen to our conversation on white people whispering their own, which was really lovely in so many ways, except technically. Due to some things we are still ignorant/incapable of fixing in the audio, we have kept it on the shelf until now. At the very least, go to 52:25 to hear Sara read her letter to us.

Another friend was recently struggling with her own dissonance while visiting her family in England. She has known them to be fair & loving people, yet was appalled that they were laughing at racist jokess, which means they’re colluding with racism on some level, no? Yes.

Yet, how much is it our duty & place to nudge them? Is it more our duty because we care? Or less? Can we communicate any & all of this from a place of great care & love for all? How do we care for ourselves in the process of investigating & then possibly interacting?

So, I have found this phrase “first world problems” to be a fantastic way to bridge these seeming-separate paradigms of my (re)new(ed) sensitivity to our all-oneness, with the seeming-parasitic/viral surge of consumption, poisoning & peril. When I hear someone complaining about flight delays, or about getting sunburned while on tropical holiday, or about having tired feet from shopping all day, I find I have little to no empathy. I struggle in that social moment to know how to respond. How helpful is it to get into a hierarchy of whose dire circumstances hold more sway & deserve more compassion? Yet. And yet. Some things are just much much harder than others. Do we really need to spell them out? They’re everywhere–the horrors people survive are the meat-stock of the news media.

In gaining a wider perspective, I cannot help but be thankful. When I feel in any way sorry for myself, there is the care that is needed to self-soothe, to heal & to grow onwards, but when it wallows into self-pity that loses sight of the wider perspective it’s all-ways because I’ve lost track of my deep gratitude for the privileges I enjoy. And how could I possibly enjoy all that I am gifted in this life–now that I have the eyes to see it all–without also feeling an emerging sense of responsibility to do what I can to bridge the gaps for others to enjoy the same? For what I now call Privileges could one day –if we wake up & so choose– become basic human rights for all. I’m talking about privileges like feeling safe in one’s skin & having the financial security to feed, house & clothe oneself. Right now only the privileged are privileged to enjoy these things. And I am left wondering how I can make a difference.

So it’s small. It’s not going to bring clean water to those in Flint, Michigan or stop the violence against women & children living in virtual war zones, right next door. But it’s something. So I start here.

I say, playfully,

First world problems! We’re lucky, eh? That this is the worst of our day?

If it’s not playfully, lovingly done, it will bomb & lead to walls being flung up between my values & theirs. Because I will be judging them. Instead of engaging the way I would with a child who doesn’t know any better by playfully showing them new things, I am berating them for not-knowing. I’ve heard from some folks –not in the dominant white privileged culture– that it is not their responsibility to do this. They are tired & so often are struggling to survive us. It feels beyond them to love us despite our unconscious perpetuation of their oppression. Fair enough. White people must whisper their own.

I have heavily resisted being called white. It’s not that I’m not white, it’s that I have struggled to see how sticking with color labels will help us move beyond them. However, I have also seen that I cannot let go of something I don’t know I’m holding onto in the first place. I say this to my students on (& off) the mat a lot. Unless you are conscious of your shoulders being hiked up around your ears it’ll only be accidental that they release. So unless I explore all the ways in which I am white & fully own it, I can’t let go of it.

In this vein, I begin to see subtler & subtler ways I have subconsciously supported white male dominance in this world. All of this terrain is like a treacherous No-Man’s Land, through which only a Wonder Woman could cross unscathed, deflecting all hits aimed at her. I have already been hit by both “sides” so necessity is making of me some sort of investigative comedian. This is my suggestion (& I know I didn’t make this phrase up so all gratitudes to whoever did!): First world problems!

Play with putting your values into action with those you love the most. Look for the common ground & speak from that, as Sara did in her letter to her family. And I would suggest doing this as much for your own sake as for what you imagine to be theirs. In fact, do it entirely for your own peace of mind, because as much as we like to assume responsibility for others, they are ultimately their own beings responsible for their own fine selves. The only thing I have any level of control over is myself & even that is often a slippery slope. I have seen levels of depression seep into me from feeling at odds with the wealthy blindness that causes people to not-see how their wealth, their lives as they know them, have been built on the countless lives of others, human & otherwise.

There is a repressed dissonance in us as we try to keep it all smooth & copacetic with family. We are denying a truth. Our reality is that we’ve woken up from our dream to find these truths staring us down. I know from decades of blurting things out artlessly, how blurting is not as elegant as Sara’s letter. Blurting alienates, divides, judges. Part of this separation process is necessary for me to see more clearly “not this-not that”, neti-neti.

How can I know who I am & what I’m willing to stand for

unless I know who I’m not & what I’m no longer willing to stand for?

We do this in adolescence & however long after–we specifically individuate ourselves from our families. And maybe we weren’t encouraged to do this then so doing it now feels like a betrayal of them. Or maybe some of our family have louder voices so it launches into a battle right quick, which we wish to avoid.

In all of this, & through all of this, gratitude is my saving grace. Love is my last leg.

To set this post to rest for now, here’s a conversation between a Pueblo chief & Carl Jung:

“See,” Ochwiay Biano said, “how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad.”

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

“They say that they think with their heads,” he replied.

“Why of course. What do you think with?” I asked him in surprise.

“We think here,” he said, indicating his heart.

This is a small shard of what needs to be explored more & understood better– how to “think Indian” without appropriating their wisdom, their ways, their right to life.

Actually, most lastly, no image came to mind for this post. So if something occurs to you, pass it along

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/first-world-problems/feed/2this little light of mine…http://earthwidetribe.com/this-little-light-of-mine/
http://earthwidetribe.com/this-little-light-of-mine/#commentsThu, 08 Feb 2018 09:37:52 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1861This past year was the longest I’ve been away from New Zealand since moving here in 2005. Distance does make the heart grow fonder. And since my return, just a couple weeks ago, so much has been unfolding easily, which is comforting. It’s a tribute not only to the years of hard slog I put in prior, but also to the subtle, yet profound, work I’ve been focusing on in more recent years of Letting Go!

I’ve been delighted and affirmed this past week with a few instances of truly putting my best energy forward AND letting go of my attachment to the outcome. I’ve done this in the past, without the same level of smooth success as I’m experiencing now, which makes it clear that I only thought I was unattached in the past! Like the times I surrendered as a tactic instead of a full-out giving up, a flat-out, white-flag-waving surrender to the current battle or struggle. It was more like I still had my hands held behind my back so Surrender wouldn’t see, but I was ready to grasp whatever fruits fell from my supposed-surrender. Wouldn’t you know though, the universe is wise in ways I may never witness. It’s on to me.

So what do I mean by that phrase above “Where you doubt, is where your confidence will grow”? It sifted into my awareness this morning as I walked back from singing my prayersongs by the sea. It’s not a given; it’s not that you keep focusing on the doubt and you’ll suddenly be confident. It was more an evolution. I realized that as I quietly kept on with whatever clear thing pulled me towards it, even though there was doubt about my abilities or about the right-ness of it, eventually that thing became integral to me.

Like these prayersongs I do each day to the water, in gratitude for who and what is in my world. In the past 4 years of living out of suitcases, this practice has been one of the very few things that’s made any sense and kept me grounded on this planet, such as we’ve colonized it to be. This simple ceremony has been something I could do to align myself with the greatness beyond humanity’s shortsighted greed.

When we doubt, there’s a desire yet also confusion about the desire. For whatever reason, we find ourselves waiting for permission, or the camaraderie of support. It feels like we’re groping about in the dark. This is the shadow of Ajna Chakra, or what most call the 3rd eye (and some call the 1st eye)–the seat of intuition and insight, of clear seeing. I see it like a miner’s lamp or a headlamp for camping; a beam of light from the forehead that can only show us what’s right in front of us. Seems like that small funnel of illumination wouldn’t be enough when you want to make a great journey. But what if that isolation of sight is what keeps us focused? I know my mind goes all over the place when my eyes are taking in the sights. However, when I can’t see beyond this immediate pool of light and my steps are uncertain, I must pay attention.

The trouble I find with traveling is that people always want to box me into a geography by asking, “Where’s your home?” or “Where did you come from?” Even if I tell them a place on the planet I usually also put my hand on my sternum and say, “Here, right here.”

And then there’s the trouble I find with ‘coming home’ or returning to a place where people have known me (or think they have) and now they want to know, “What’s next? What’s your plan?”

I don’t know. I truly don’t know. All I can see is what’s right in front of me.

The difference between the camping/mining headlamp and Ajna Chakra is that Ajna comes from within. By clearing the grime, or doubt, from my screens and tuning in more and more, and even more yet, to what lightens and brightens me up, the illumination itself opens the way and steers me. Does that make sense? There’s both a light emanating from within as well as the illumination it extends outside and beyond oneself. For example, my smile in that top image. It’s taken me years of doubt about my smile or about how I look in pictures or how I truly am deep in my being, to be willing to fully smile freely for the camera. And photos don’t lie, so this was evident. These days it not only feels freeing and light to smile fully, my small act of bravery gives others an opportunity to do the same, whatever that looks like for each individual. I’m allowing my light to shine.

There are only a few songs in English that stick around in my head and this is one of them:

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine–let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

I sing it to animals, to children, to my mother and to myself. It’s an easy mantra, cheerful.

In MYOGA’s Seasonal Structure, I align Ajna Chakra with First Winter. Right now in the Northern Hemisphere we’ve gone beyond First Winter and it’s Deep Winter, approaching First Spring. And where I am in the Southern Hemisphere it’s Fullest Summer, approaching Autumn. So why am I writing about this now? Because our seasons have gotten so out of whack. I’ve seen it myself everywhere I’ve had the privilege to travel, and I’ve heard it told from the people there, and in many other places around the globe.

Nobody knows what’s what anymore.

One day it’s freezing, the next it’s sunny and warm. The animals and plants continually respond to what-is on the most immediate level. What else can they do? Adaptability is essential these days. We must ‘trust the longer journey’ even when we can only see what’s right in front of us.

Years and years ago, when I was living in India and on an assignment to take photos of men in turbans, I wrote this:

What lights you up? What draws you towards it? If you’re in doubt, confused, how would it feel to focus for a time on light? What would it feel and look like in your life to allow yourself to be drawn towards the light like a moth? And what would it look or feel like to radiate light outwards, to whatever extent it will radiate out of you easily in this moment, this Now?!

Instead of fixating on the doubt, perhaps the trick here is to focus on the light and what you do know–what’s right in front of you right now.

In these past few years of deep not-knowing I started studying stand-up comedy, as a way of allowing myself to be drawn towards lightness. I’ve been practicing lightening up. I’m no good at the stand-up, but who cares?! I amuse myself at least! I also still have doubts about my ability to ever be any good at it, but in the meantime I am thoroughly enjoying the process of learning, of attempting the art. And those persistent stabs in the dark, through the doubt, are increasing my confidence.

I’d love to hear what makes you feel lighter and brighter. Or even what you feel you really don’t know or can’t see right now. Sometimes the light is so dim it’s barely a flicker, but when you can identify it you then have a better chance of blowing some life into it!

Feel free to share in the comments–it’s amazing how much we all share the same world…

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/this-little-light-of-mine/feed/6Women Who Run with the Waterhttp://earthwidetribe.com/women-who-run-with-the-water/
http://earthwidetribe.com/women-who-run-with-the-water/#respondTue, 14 Nov 2017 00:37:50 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1817preface: I wrote this in August 2017, before the tide of #metoo and all the rest of the awakening women have been undergoing, to stand up for themselves and for one another. Long may this liberation continue.

It’s an enormously simple thing. Walk with water and pray to—and for—it. If it’s a river start at the headwaters and then walk it to where it flows into an ocean, or to its confluence with another river. Or choose a spot on a lake, walk around it and return to the start. How can something so simple be so profound? I can tell you what I’ve experienced in the indigenous-led walks I’ve been blessed to join, but, like any spiritual practice, what I tell you will only be my finger pointing to the moon. You must find the moon for yourself. You must walk. I cannot do it for you. Although, if you wish, I will include you in my prayers with the water.

And what does this even mean—to pray for someone or some thing? How effective is this sort of intention or energy that we call prayer? Or that we avoid calling prayer because of all the damage done by religions. How can we reclaim this word, and therefore the practice of, praying? What does it mean to pray? In my limited experience, prayer emerges from a wider perspective that recognizes our place in the scheme of things. Yes, I feel I am divine — an individuated incarnation of all-that-is — and at the same time the more I learn the less I know and the more infinitesimal I feel in the vastness of all-that-is. This remarkable world we’ve had the good fortune to (choose to) inhabit is still beyond our mental grasp. Try as we might to untangle all the systems and to separate functions out from forms, we cannot conceive of the vast complexity of Existence with our small brains.

In my experience, prayer is a petition arising from the recognition, the re-member-ing, of the Great Mystery. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with science. I have all-ways been annoyingly curious about too many things, yet I do know that knowing things will only carry me so far. Our paradigm is premised on nouns, on the idea that the world can be fixed and finite, which is not necessarily right or wrong. It is, however, only one view. Another view would see the flux, the flow, the infinite openness and changeability of creation. This is difficult to even convey adequately in English because English is a language oriented around the nouns. I wanted to say that each moment is unfolding, but that’s still oriented around the noun of “moment”. What if our words were more like becoming-a-moment? No fixed edges to cling to. No assurance of stasis. And oh how I have tried to cling!

But when we walk for the water we get to know its ways. From early morning to late afternoon or even early evening we walk quickly, handing off the copper pail (click here for an audio of the beads on pail) that holds the water we gathered at the headwaters so that it can continue steadily, swiftly onwards. In this case, downstream. If I were to make it about Me and try to carry the water all by myself to prove I can, I would tire and the water would suffer. When it moves, it moves. When we walk we do so as quickly as we can for .5 – 1.5 miles and then we hand it off to the next walker. We never go backwards and we don’t stop until we put the water and the eagle staff to rest at the end of a long day. When water is healthy it does not stagnate; it flows ever onwards.

And when more water is added to the river — from rain, snow, run-off, or another river joining it — the merger is seamless. Unlike humans. Ever notice how most traffic on roads is from the human inability to “merge like a zip”, as the signs on New Zealand roads admonish us to do? Humans resist merger with a passion. There’s too often a desire to get ahead. Where are we all going so fast? What will it benefit you to get one more car ahead, really? This ego-centric competitive way of being is not water’s way.

Competition, as I’ve written before, at its roots, is about striving together and I saw that in the recent Nibi Walk I was on. If one of us goes a little farther on her turn in the relay, the others also want to go farther. If one runs with the water, the others want to give it a try. Our aim is to move the water, in this case the Missouri River, as quickly, and as reverently, as we can from the headwaters in Three Forks, Montana 2,341 miles downstream to its confluence with the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. Like I said, if I get all high on myself and think I can be the one responsible for that feat, I will fail. Not just in the accomplishment of the mission, but in the intention underlying it–each step is a prayer. It will be about my self-gratification instead of about the collective health.

Not only are we in ceremony from when we set our opening circle, usually about 6am, until we have our closing ceremony 30-40 miles down the road, we are essentially in ceremony 24/7.

This donated RV was home to six of us for 54 days!

By living together in tight quarters, we are learning how to let go of what gets in the way of the water’s way, which is to flow, to move. Obstacles within ourselves, within the group dynamics, on the road with strangers, or with physical blocks like miles of construction, are liquified and released as soon as possible. There is no time to hold on. Who I thought I was, who I imagine I might be, what I remember about the world, and where I dream I might move next, are water that slips through my fingers. Even if I attempt to dam it, as man loves to do with the wildness of water, or to contain it, which he also loves to do, it will evaporate eventually. It will shapeshift up into the air. Or freeze. Or find a crack to drip thru until it has widened that crack into a fissure and it flows wildly on. And all of this is what we must do.

Our insistence on going it alone will be our demise.

We must converge, merge, and emerge from separatism into confluence, into a unified flow. This is what calls me to walk the water, as water IS life, or “Mni Wiconi” as the Lakota say, and as Standing Rock made widely known. ‘Water is Life’ is not just a catchy phrase but an undeniable fact for all of existence. We all need water. It is something we can all stand for, and pray for the health of.

How could you not?

How could you say, “Ah I don’t care what happens to the water. I don’t care if it costs more per volume than oil. I don’t care if I can’t drink it or swim in it or even wade in it because it’s so defiled by industrial waste, fossil fuel pollution, pipeline accidents, agricultural chemical run-off, the exhaust from high-speed motor boats, everyday rubbish… I’ll just drink…”

What? What isn’t made with water? What doesn’t require water to grow? Where will you get your food? How will you nourish your family? Forget washing your car or watering your golf course, what will keep you alive, if not water?

This is something I can not only stand behind, but walk for. And, yes, run with.

me running uphill with the water in North Dakota, wearing the badge given to me by a Standing Rock supporter that says “WATER IS LIFE, NO DAPL” (photo by Chas Jewett)

This is everyone’s work and everyone is welcome to walk with us, yet this is particularly women’s ceremony. Whether you choose to conceive and birth children, as a woman you have the capacity to hold life in your body, just as the earth holds all life and all water in its body. When those of us in the follow-van (to keep our walker safe from traffic, dogs, & curious folk on the roads) see one of our own shift from walking swiftly to running, our spirits are lifted. At the end of a long day, after more than 30 days straight walking, when the walker is flagging-tired, but she then lifts the eagle feather or the eagle staff higher, it’s such a small thing but in that moment it is everything.

And we all surge forward with her.

I had a simple vision one day by the Manawatu River in New Zealand, apparently the most polluted river in the Southern Hemisphere. This was where I did my water ceremony each day for the three months I lived nearby. In my mind’s-eye it was dawn, just like it was in that moment, and as far as my eagle-eye vision from above could see, there were women along both banks of the river. Each woman had her spot, her private place to connect to the waters of life as they moved along, as they moved through her. In her act of caring for the water, which is also herSelf, the river moved towards greater healing.

It’s a simple thing. Wherever you are, connect to the water, and daily. You are so much water. Developing a relationship with an external body of water brings you into intimate relationship with your own internal emotional body. But be warned, you’ll feel more. You’ll see more of what’s right in front of you as well as what may have been hidden deep inside of you.

A few months ago I was at a drumming ceremony and we journeyed to the ancestors of that upstate NY land. One woman was so disturbed by their pain that she wanted it to go away. Others were kinder than I was. I said, “There has been great pain here. How can we heal if we don’t know the sickness that we’ve been?” You yourself may not have hunted down Aborigines or burned down the homes of the Seneca people or force-marched the Dakota people to their deaths. But your ancestors may have. And their blood is in your veins.

Until we all own all of it, we will act unconsciously.

We are so much water. Let’s run it clear. Let’s move the stagnated bits out, flush the filth, purify out the poisons, and wake up to how we treat our waters, our women, our mother earth.

******************

For more on how You, yes even YOU!, can help Aotearoa’s waterways, go to my good friend Grant’s site. And for those on Turtle Island keen to check out/support the remarkable woman, Sharon Day, who led our 1700+ mile water-walk along the Missouri River, her 14th walk, flow to this site.

If you feel overwhelmed, start with the water that supports your life–love it by knowing it and thanking it. I’d love to hear from you about your relationship to water. What has this writing or the recent dramtic environmental shifts done to heighten your appreciation of water?

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/women-who-run-with-the-water/feed/0A Necessary Holehttp://earthwidetribe.com/a-necessary-hole/
http://earthwidetribe.com/a-necessary-hole/#commentsWed, 26 Jul 2017 13:33:57 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1808Is it that I have an intrinsic eye for detail which was honed by highly detailed work like millinery, costume-making & photography? Or did those interests train my eye? Most likely it’s a spirallic journey of building one upon the other–interest upon skill, facility upon fascination. At Wild Camp in Catalunya, one of the leaders said I was a good tracker because I quickly identified the tent of a fellow camper based on the striped jumper visible on his sleeping bag. I track the details of people’s clothing. In university I proposed an independent major called The Semiotics of Dress–why people wear what they wear. Most people think there is no thinking behind their clothing choices, but I suggest that that proximity to the unconscious brain, of one’s costume choice, is part of why it indicates so much about the person. For some, clothing is very much a conscious choice of individuation, but for most it’s tied in to ease, profession, necessity. I met a young economist in Sweden at an activist training & she wore her hair up like a cone-head beehive. It clearly took time to style that way & the rest of her costume followed suit in being consciously & creatively chosen. For her it was a statement of her self, a beacon of her difference from others, a means of signaling instantaneously that what you would learn from her would not be the usual & expected. I love the stories woven into the fabric of our lives, that are so often unknown to others but that my detective mind delights in ferreting out.

So when I offered to mend one of the wild camp leader’s signature pieces of clothing, I learned a bit more about him. Most days he wore a leather waistcoat (vest) & it had a few holes in it at crucial stress points. He obviously loved it so I offered to mend those tears & holes to prevent it from falling apart further. Which was when he told me that he’d found that vest in a thrift store for 1 dollar, but that it had been one of very few pieces of clothing he’d taken on one of his many missions. He’d spent a night in a cave, wearing that vest & when he woke in the morning, a mouse had eaten some of it. The hungry & brave mouse had also eaten the bottom of his wallet so that when he stood up, all his change spilled out & ran circles on the cave floor. With each stitch I imagined him alone in the cave & the mouse braving his mountainous, sleeping body to make a good meal of an old leather vest & a wallet.

Another camper sat down next to us at the fire to chat & I offered to mend the hole in the back left arm of a jumper I’d seen him wearing earlier in the week. He thanked me but then explained that that hole was where his son, when he held him in his arms, would stick his fingers in & make contact with his arm, skin to skin. That touched me. That story of the father being touched by the son touched me. It was a necessary hole, one that was better left gaping. It made me wonder if I’d been hasty in my own mending, in my own life. Had I run headlong into mending everything, fixing it & patting myself on the back for taking good care, when there may have been moments I could have had greater access to the soul of someone, or the story that binds us together, had I been willing to leave the holes open. Of course, what came to mind is “the wound, the hole, is where the light enters”, as opined by those two great poets, Rumi, & then Leonard Cohen.

We’re smack dab in the middle of eclipse season & I’ve, once again, been contemplating what it means to cover over & to reveal. Like Christo’s work with his wife Jeanne-Claude shows us on grand scales–when we hide something from sight that the populace has become blind to through regular surface seeing, & when it is then revealed again, the seeing goes deeper. When the sun is obscured by the moon or the moon is obscured by the shadow of the earth, the revelation of light after the obscuration feels meaningful, significant. From what I can understand about eclipses, they are like trees. These eclipses we are in now are like a ring being added to a tree, but unlike a tree that will add a ring each year (all going well) these rings in an eclipse cycle take about 18 years & are called a Saros Cycle. I was wowed by this learning because 18 years ago I left the US to see the last full solar eclipse of the millenium in India. I went to India in search of Indians, & in search of myself separate from my homeland. This year I returned to the US, after living overseas for the past 18 years, in search of “Indians” in my homeland, & in search of myself aligned with my homeland.

The first ring of this tree-like eclipse cycle (poetically named Saros cycle 145, a cycle that began with the origins of the US & the early battles between Pocahontas’s people & the colonists in 1639) I would have experienced in this lifetime would have been when I was 8. What came to mind when I considered these touch-down moments were the splits that occurred in me. At 8 I had a bike accident that split my forehead & upper lip in half, required 52 stitches by a plastic surgeon, & which separated my right side from my left. 18 years later, at age 26, I aborted a child which psychically separated my lower body from my upper body. It has taken me most of the 18 years since then to reconnect to my sexuality & (pro)creativity in a positive way. What I instantaneously saw with these two was the vertical split & then the horizontal split, which, when overlaid on one another, creates the symbol for Earth–the cross in the circle. Immediately my mind & heart went to the vision of reuniting myself. The gaping hole in my head had been sewn up. The centaurian split or chasm between my animal, libidinal nature & my elevated, spirit self has been united.

So now, as I swim within the deep unknown, I know in my bones that those were necessary holes in my life. They were the access points for contact with the great beyond. They enabled my heart to crack open wide & for light to both pour in, & pour out. They made clear the fragility of these human forms, the fleetingness of these precious vehicles. What I see now, what I feel now, what I live now, is these two rings of experience on a much bigger time-scale than my human body can encompass, as vertical & horizontal splits that now, in their healing, come to meet at my heart. The centre point, when I draw the lines inwards to meet one another, is my heart. And as I’ve explored elsewhere, the only true & deep response I can have to heartbreak is gratitude. When I see my heart as a fist, its potential for contact with anything other than itself is limited. When I see my heart as a hand splayed open wide, which is equivalent to my heart breaking into pieces, I inevitably feel more because there is more surface area to feel more.

And I have actively avoided this. I’ve actively protected myself from feeling the pain of the world, feeling it would drown me. I would die of grief. I would be incapacitated by care. And I have been. I have done. Yet I’m still here, miraculously. Still here, learning to look with unflinching & fierce love at how sick we’ve become. What I can offer you is my grief. Traveling down the Hudson River on a solar boat with the SeaChange Voyage these past couple weeks, I have cried a river as wide & ancient as this mighty two-way river, called by the First Nations before Hudson & other white men, Muhheakantuc. The most disturbing experience I had was one fish. One fish among 6 of its fellow fish who were belly up & dead, but this one was still living, or trying to. Something in its bloated belly caused it to rise to the surface, its sore-ridden, vulnerable white belly up above the water’s level, even though it was alive. Imprisoned from within by plastic that made it float. Or gas from the pipeline nearby or poison from the water treatment plant nearby. I don’t know the cause. I only saw the effect.

I also didn’t know how to help it. Do I pierce it to release the gas? Do I kill it to end its struggle & seeming suffering? I was helpless. I am, so often, helpless. I have only the innocence of my care for other critters, my horror & immense grief at how humanity’s selfish unconsciousness has tortured & destroyed countless species. I can offer only my prayers, it seems. I look for the victories, like the bald eagles returning to the area where high DDT counts made their eggs so porous that when they sat on them to incubate their babies, they crushed them. Imagine. Imagine your love for your child, your instinctive care for your unborn baby, being the very thing that kills it because your environment has been so poisoned. So, a small victory that we saw bald eagles.

Another small victory that sturgeon, dinosaur-ancient fish with exo-skeletons that I came across in my research for PocaHauntUs & that, at that time in the late 1500’s could be up to 14 feet long! They are still surviving, despite the immense disturbances to their watery world with petrochemicals & other poisons dumped onto them, & the disruption of their circadian cycles with 24 hour traffic of high-vibration barges & trains up & down the river.

When I was little I cried so much for animals & habitats that salt crystals perched at the edges of my eyelids. I picked them off in flakes, leaving my eyelids raw where the eyelashes met the lids. Eventually I learned to close my eyes to the details. I didn’t know how else to survive. Two Saros cycles later I come full circle to standing at the edge of desecration & realizing that as helpless as it still feels for me to simply stand & see all the details of destruction & cruelty & heartlessness in the pursuit of industry, perhaps my heart, my eyes, my existence are a hole in the fabric of humanity that allows contact. Perhaps this aching hole in my heart is a necessary hole.

Tell me, if you dare, which wounds allow the light to enter you?

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/a-necessary-hole/feed/4the flagrant fly-in-your-face of feelingizationshttp://earthwidetribe.com/the-flagrant-fly-in-your-face-of-feelingizations/
http://earthwidetribe.com/the-flagrant-fly-in-your-face-of-feelingizations/#commentsSat, 20 May 2017 14:18:51 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1763Recently I was given a reading of my Akashic Record as a gift. I was told I could ask 5-7 questions of this record of all-that-is. I noticed the small panic that arose in me around the preciousness of getting the questions “right.” I thought of the genie in the bottle or the folktales where people ask for silly things & waste their questions. She assured me she would help me out should I struggle at all in my asking. What I found in that reading were some affirmations of what I already felt, as well as some surprises around what I hope to live into. When I asked if there was anything my ancestors wanted me to actualize, any aspects of them they wanted me to bring into being through my living, I was told:

heal the wounds of your lineage, so the future lineage can be more authentic & not carry on the baggage of past life issues, burdens

That’s pretty much what my intention was with my show, so I felt like I was right on track. The show was a concentrated & dramatized look at not only my own family patterns going back 14 generations, but at the history of the U.S., since they are interwoven stories. My intention was to transmute ancestral poisons into potions for present & future generations, & Shapeshifting history into Herstory is the byline to PocaHauntUs. I was working with the idea of simultaneous time instead of linear time, by experimenting with changing the story to see how that could change “the past,” which we usually think of as solid & unchangeable.

The first time I had an experience of this possibility of shifting time paradigms through story, was when I recognized how I had been storifying my 2nd stepfather. When I described him to others I told the story the same way each time & I suddenly realized I was doing this to create a particular reflection on myself. Instead of saying, ‘He never fails to remember me by sending me flowers & cards, & he trained as a painter, an artist,’ I would say ‘He’s a florist, living with a man & they have a miniature chihuahua.’ I chose to indicate he was gay because of how I wanted to be seen. But maybe he didn’t want to be seen that way. Or maybe there were other qualities of his being that gave a more complete picture of who he really is.

This was the same premise I was applying to telling my own version of the story of Pocahontas. Sure, it was based on a huge amount of research & “fact”-finding, but ultimately my story is also a story.

And this is where I feel we can get tied up, caught by what we Think is possible, based on what we Think is True.

When I was in the process of writing the show, I got so caught in my fear of being caught out — of not having all the facts straight — that I was paralyzed for a time. After all, how could centuries of story around this mythical figure many people didn’t even realize was a living person, not be true? How could Disney not have it right? (In case you don’t know me, that’s sarcasm there.) What unfroze me was realizing that I had to bring my own process into the story. It couldn’t be something that was separate from me, since I was the most recent product of the story anyway.

“How you tell the story & Who tells the story IS the story,”

I wrote, & then spoke, in the show. I wanted people to consider that facts are not as infallible, & story is not as flimsy, as we make them out to be.

All indigenous cultures have origin stories. These stories are not just entertainment. They are orienting maps to our existence in time & space. Recently I learned, through reading Charles Eisenstein’s book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, that the etymology of the word fact ties it to the word factory, a place where things are made. We make our facts. We choose our stories. Whether we’re conscious of this process, or not, is highly debatable, but the fact (!!!) remains that facts are changeable. As we know from quantum physics, we cannot separate the observer from the observed. How we think & what we think is how we speak, how we live, & what we meet in the wider world.

Which leads me to consciousness. In February I used my air miles to fly from New Zealand to Sweden to pursue a romance that had started in Mexico on New Year’s Eve. The crux point upon which we both realized that this relationship became untenable, without a future to draw it forward, was this issue of consciousness. For me it is everything, it is the revolution of humanity. My “work” in recent years, but perhaps for my whole life, has been to continually clear away the clutter & the debris from the past so that I can live a bright, undimmed day Now. I deeply desire a conscious relationship & conscious conception, gestation, birthing, & co-parenting of a family. This man was able to say to me, quite clearly, that he’d be fine if we accidentally conceived, but that he didn’t want to consciously create a child. I struggled to get my head around this. How can you consciously say you want to be unconscious? Doesn’t the saying of it automatically make you more conscious?

When I reached Sweden he had not cleaned his apartment for my arrival. He didn’t have any excuses, although he did vaguely wonder if it was better to be honest with me about who he was–not someone who made a habit of cleaning or organizing–than to present a false image of himself. While I could see the logic in that, my first instinct was one of panic. Walking into places that are draped in dust over layers & layers of un-like things tumbled together, calls up a sort of primal panic in me. In this instance I was able to stay steady, observe & then discuss calmly with him my great need to create some order, for my own sake & my own sanity. Not because I needed to change or fix him.

I admit I wasn’t raised with a love for cleaning. I didn’t have examples of how essential a process cleaning could be, so it’s been a long-time coming, this positive relationship with cleaning & clearing. As a child, I was exposed to great chaos & out of those instances (or sometimes years) of living amongst too much stuff with too little order, I developed the skill of making order out of chaos. I’m grateful for this valuable skill.

What I had seen of the psychoses of my grandmother & my uncle when they, separately, came to stay with us, was how their minds would very rapidly spill outwards & stamp themselves upon their environments. And I would be caught up in the maelstrom of it. A few years ago, after many years of not being exposed to this, I visited my uncle in his apartment & I felt again that visceral reaction to the seeming chaos. Now, let me pause here & say that I am not a neat-freak. I have not gone to the opposite extreme of imagining I have any control over this universe & therefore need to control all the things within my reach. My clothes spill out from my suitcases. My toiletries are jumbled, though in one bag. I’m sure I still have too many unnecessary things that I carry around in my baggage, weighing myself down, or stow away in the storage units I have on two separate continents. What it is with stuff, is a matter of putting like things with like.

Where the panic arises in me is when the dying or dead get mixed irreverently with the living. What causes anxiety in me is when I open a cupboard door to find food–some with worms running through it, dishes–some uncleaned, bits of used foil & other random things that have nothing to do with the kitchen space like screws, coins, bills, jewelry, sewing stuff, uncapped markers, keys to unknown locks… It’s the combination of things not being clean with things not being sorted that sends me into a tailspin. I’ve inquired into why this has such a significant impact on me. Partly it’s those childhood associations with insanity.

For example, here’s an instance I was recently told about, but have only vague memories of, that has given me great insight into why I associate house disorder with craziness & then with loss of freedom & even death. My grandmother looked after me when I was about 6. When my 1st stepfather dropped in to check on us, he found the place turned upside down. What I imagine this looked like is something like that scene from Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes, near the end when he locks himself in an attic space to solve the mystery. There are drawings on the floor, ritual-like things set up, strings tying images together, scraps of food in odd places, furniture moved to reflect the order of the story he’s trying to work out in his mind. Again, I want to emphasize the gifts this early exposure has given me–insight into how there is order in even the most disorderly. There is in-deed ‘method in his madness,’ as Shakespeare wrote. Everyone is in the process of making meaning of their lives, in their own way. However, what I’ve realized I need to make meaning in my life, & to feel free & happy, is not that.

And what happened next was that because of that chaos, my grandmother was taken to mental hospital. Not too long after that she died of cancer. So in my young mind I can imagine that the line-up of events spelled out thusly–chaos leads to incarceration leads to death so, therefore, avoid chaos.

Another part of why I panic in the face of too much stuff with no clear organization, is because one of the cardinal sins, in my books, is waste.

Wasting resources is like spitting in god’s face.

I know, that sounds extreme. But I struggle to have compassion for those who complain about not having enough when, in fact, they are surrounded by riches. They just can’t find them in the mess. Or they just can’t see what’s clearly there, because it’s cluttered. It’s like trying to see the bright day outside when your window is smeared in dirt & grease and your drapes are drawn! So then what happens when you’re ready to make your masterpiece or your meal is that you end up wasting time searching out something you know you have, but just can’t find, or wasting money buying a duplicate of the tool you know you have, but, again, can’t locate when you need it. My uncle seemed to never have money, but when I was 12 we went to visit his place. Looking around at the barely discernible pathways between piles, my stepfather said, “Look, you’re rich!” & he starting picking up all the coins off the floor, the shelves, & the countertops. It added up to quite a bit of money.

When things aren’t find-able, when they’re not organized, then we have no access to them. It’s like having vaults of money but no key to open the vault. And all that extra stuff weighs us down, energetically. Yet there’s a fear of throwing it away, of not having it, even when it’s not being utilized because we can’t find it! How absurd to want to keep something that we didn’t even realize we had until we found it again in the process of throwing things away. I’m no saint on this front. I still have things in storage, things that are not being used. However, last year I managed to downsize my NY storage by half & gave away much of that half to friends or charities. I tackled this colossal challenge (it felt that way to me at least!) by imagining the situation from the stuff’s point of view. When I thought about it from the stuff’s point of view, I realized those things would much rather be held & read & turned into art & loved into life, than to sit gathering mold & dust in a plastic box, inside a bigger metal box, in a field, in a city where I don’t even currently live.

What struck me in what I just wrote takes me back around to the Akashic Reading words about clearing the baggage of past life issues from my lineage so present & future folks can live more authentically. I said earlier that the panic arises in me when the dying or dead are mixed up with the living. Let me clarify. I know now that the dead, the ancestors, are in-deed mixed up with the living; that they are all around us. Not just those from “the past” but also from “the future,” — the ones-to-be as well as the ones-who’ve-been. It’s not the mixing of realms that disturbs me. It’s the lack of care & awareness around this cosmic cocktail party that freaks me out. Having dead food mixed in with the living food feels disrespectful to both. However, putting out a Spirit plate of living food for the dead, feels honorable. This is a lovely practice of putting aside a doll-sized portion of everything you’re eating, at every meal, for the spirits, as a way of honoring & feeding them. Of giving them their place at the table. Of knowing how to locate them even when you can’t see them.

What’s happening in this practice is gratitude. It’s an action of giving thanks for those who’ve made it possible for me to be here. We forget to do this. In all our victimized snivelling about how much we don’t have, we fail to see just how much we do have, & right here immediately within reach. I say “we” because I mean “me too.” This happens not just with the visible material goods of this world, but also with the invisible, yet indivisable-from-us, goodness of the world. I know I have not fully realized my own potential. I know I have a tendency to fall back on the default setting of impossibility instead of I’m-Possibility. I know —

the sexy pull of sadness
the dull dampening of depression
the relentless wriggle-hold of rage
the shackle-hold of shyness
the graveyard of endless grieving

Clearing the clutter & deactivating these defaults is work. It’s the work of waking up, of coming into greater & greater consciousness. And the slippery slope I’ve noticed & am alluding to in those verses is the recognition that when I focus too much on the work, I am distracted from ever fully living the reward of the work. Which is living lightly & authentically this one life I do have to live.

When I asked the records what my purpose in this life is, they essentially said that I’ve been taking life too seriously & need to lighten up! I had to laugh at myself, at them, at the glaring wisdom of this. Yes I need to heal the wounds of our lineage AND I also need to–

“…do what brings you joy, peace, satisfaction..Follow the wants.”

This is part of what they said & I was so perplexed by this that I wrote it out & put it into my wallet. I honestly don’t know how to define what brings me joy, peace, satisfaction. So I’ve made it my assignment to find out — to contemplate what joy, peace & satisfaction would look, feel, taste, sound, even smell like.

Just days after having this reading of my records, I met another man & we had so much in common between us even though we grew up in very different cultures & hailed from different lands. We shared a pathway carved from consciousness, a living relationship with the un-living, a love & respect for the wild, & an appreciation of the value & place of grieving. The difference I felt between us was that I’ve spent so much of my life in tears & am ready to step lighter, while it seems he’s just making headway in the grieving & ancestral healing department. Sure, laughter has all-ways been part of my journey too, but like those verses above indicate, there’s been this subtle yet insistent ancestral pull of the heavy & sad. I know, in my bones, the value of grieving. We as western people have done too little of it. Our entertainment accounts are overdrawn & our grief accounts need addressing. Yet my particular assignment is to lighten up. These past couple years I’ve been studying stand-up comedy. See the irony in what I just said? — I’ve been studying it! I’ve been so serious, so intent, my whole life. Now I’m counting on those depths that I’ve been steeped in to catapult me upwards & outwards.

I’ve decided I’m going to dedicate a minimum of 11 minutes each day, from today, to a form of meditation that Arielle Ford calls “feelingizations.” Really feeling what I want, beyond merely visualizing it. For a minimum of 40 days running I will spend these few minutes each day feeling-into what brings me joy, peace, & satisfaction. Why is this so important? I have waffled between wanting a new & different reality that feels more aligned to my greatest potential & then falling back into the wasteland of not only not fully realizing that, but having the fears that have been undergirding, & therefore undermining, those desires realized instead. I have swung between the extremes of great belief & confidence in something brighter, & then dropping into great darkness & despair at not reaching it immediately.

There’s something slippery going on here. Luckily my “Indian” name is Slippery Otter. I can slide through these murky waters, dive down to the depths, emerge up into the sunlight & Play all along the way. Sea Otters have a special “pocket” under their underarms where they keep their favorite rock. This is a tool for opening shellfish, but it’s also a toy they juggle to amuse themselves.

I, too, carry special rocks in my pockets. They keep me grounded by reminding me of the support of the earth & the weight of my values in those nervy moments when I falter, or am confronted. I reach in & touch down to the bedrock, clear away the detritus of the details of the current situation & stay true, like a tree growing alongside its stabilizing rock friend.

My work now is to be more like Otter, to play, & to inquire into–

the force-field of fierce & free laughter

the flagrant fly-in-your-face of feelingizations

the pure pleasure of prioritizing play

the dancing with desires

the joy of joy

Do you know what brings you joy, peace & satisfaction? I love hearing from you when you feel called to respond. It helps me to feel that we are not separate — that the inquiry & healing that I do is not separate from what you do.

Much love & light,

Slippery Otter

Thank you to Mr. B for the late night conversation that re-lease-ed this writing, for your friendship & support that is willing to call me on my own clutter & that calls me out into the light even more. And for being a stabilizing, yet play-ful rock, re-teaching me how to live the words I first taught to you–Breathe Deeply, Live Fully!

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/the-flagrant-fly-in-your-face-of-feelingizations/feed/2what if yoga IS like religion?http://earthwidetribe.com/what-if-yoga-is-like-religion/
http://earthwidetribe.com/what-if-yoga-is-like-religion/#respondThu, 18 May 2017 17:48:32 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1736The article below was written for my friend Kara-Leah‘s The YogaLunchBox website, ages & ages ago. It’s still relevant today so I’m re-posting it here. I’ve edited it slightly & added in the bookend videos. This opening clip is from teaching FamilYoga on TVNZ.

The reason for this seemingly unrelated (to religion) video is what isn’t shown–the backstory behind it. I arrived on set to find a volunteer mother/daughter keen to participate, which was great. I’ll admit I made a racial/national assumption that because the mother was Indian she knew all about yoga & had no issues with it. This was a good lesson in checking my assumptions at the door, all-ways. Turned out she was Catholic & heavily opposed to any whiff of religion. Minutes before we were due to go live she insisted that the opening I had planned with prayer hands & Aum-ing was ‘not on’–she wouldn’t do it, nor would she allow her daughter to do it. Since our theme was a trip to the seashore I made a quick-change to the mudra & called it “seaweed fingers” & asked her to simply do what she was comfortable with. I was quite addled by her desire to debate things like Surya Namaskar just before I was meant to lead wayward kittens (aka children & their dissembling parents) through a short yoga practice, on national television! Her opposition was premised on the feeling that any practice that paid homage to anything other than the Holy Trinity of Catholicism was sacrilege, blasphemy. I didn’t have the time to argue with her, but in my mind I thought,

“Without the sun, my friend, it wouldn’t matter who you bowed your head to because we wouldn’t even exist!”

That was years ago, but just this past month I was asked to teach yoga to a group studying mindfulness. Because the course was at a centre steeped in Buddhist principles & they wanted this course to be open to any & every-one, they heavily emphasized that this was a secular group & no mention of spirit or use of prayer hands would be permitted. I wanted to help (it was not paid) & I always enjoy teaching, even in secular environments, so I went ahead with it. Internally, though, I was watching my impatience with their strong desire to separate Spirit from Mind from Body. I saw part of my mind saying, “At this stage in my life & my teaching, I’m over it. I haven’t the patience for those who are afraid of spirit.”

Turns out I was far more rigorous in sticking to their request than the participants were! At the end of the session I didn’t do the Namasté/prayer hands, but about half of the class did. I felt silly & awkward not reciprocating. It was like the few times in my life when I’ve stuck my hand out to shake someone’s hand & they blatantly refused. It’s rude. So I explained to them why I hadn’t initiated that means of acknowledging one another & they were genuinely perplexed. That says to me that perhaps we are evolving…

Without further ado, here’s a short musing from way back in 2010!!!

What if Yoga IS like Religion?

For years I’ve seen the fear people have around YOGA, some claiming it’s a cult or a religion and refusing to take part because they would be seen by the upholders of their own religion as hypocritical or blasphemous. Many yoga styles and schools are based in a religion and these days there is even Christian yoga. Still, most styles and schools stick to their claim that yoga is an art, a philosophy, and a science, but it’s not a religion.

The word religion originates from re + ligāre–to bind, tie. This definition is eerily close to the origin of the word yoga from Sanskrit yuj, meaning union, joining.

And the word cult has origins, according to one dictionary, in Latin cultus, meaning: habitation, tilling, refinement, worship.

So what if yoga is like going to church, to service, to a ceremony of your religion?

For thousands of years people have been coerced, converted and killed in the name of religions that claim to be based in love, when really they were based in fear and guilt and pain.

Now people struggle to get to a yoga class because they know they will need to exorcise their own demons (no Deus ex Machina will swoop in to save them) by facing themselves and developing a relationship to their own fear and guilt and pain. Even knowing the work involved, people still manage to show up by reminding themselves of how good they’ll feel afterwards. They’ve experienced that “yoga high”, that lightness of being and depth of connection to all-that-is.

It’s no wonder fundamentalists find yoga threatening. As a self-regulating practice, yoga removes the external control system and requires you to drive your own existence. In yoga practice you learn to honour yourself, those around you and the wider web of the world we’re woven into. Yoga requires you to take responsibility for yourSelf—from thought to word to action—to claim your “ability to respond,” while religion has so often required obedience to a code, to an external authority. Being an individual aware of how we’re all interconnected requires you to author your own life, to become your own authority.

So you have to ask yourself, and regularly, “Do I feel empowered by this practice, like I am amping up some internal power system? Or do I feel like someone has power over me here? Like something is being stripped from me?”

My conclusion?

Let’s embrace the similarities between yoga and religion by making prayers of peace with our bodies, minds and breath. By tying ourselves to something larger than ourselves through an honorable practice. And by using our keen discernment to choose practices that cultivate greater empowerment & enlightenment.

Let’s say the word Spirit out loudand allow it to mean being Alive and Awake in this crazy world, without getting caught up in the semantics of religious rights and wrongs.

Let’s have the courage to love ourselves and one another actively, which is, as far as I can tell, what every major religion has ever asked us to do anyway. Or as the Youngbloods sang,

If you hear the song I sing,
You must understand
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your command
C’mon people now,
Smile on your brother
Ev’rybody get together
Try and love one another right now
Right now
Right now!

To bookend that older post with another video, here’s a snippet of my own personal prayer that I shared with folks in Wellington last December. I call the full practice This is How I Pray—Ear2Earth & this portion is Brightest Spring Season–Svadisthana–Inner Direction. The lovely MandiLynn on the other side of the camera assumed I would stop after the “gratuitous pussy shot” as she called it, & edit that section out as an out-take. For me though it’s all-one. The sacred, the profane, the human, the animal, the spirit. It’s all yoga & it’s all prayer.

To trial one of the MYOGA Seasons practices & learn more about how & why I integrate the chakras with the seasons of the year, check this out! My intention is to empower you to empower yourself to cultivate greater liberation in this lifetime. But you’re the best judge of that…

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/what-if-yoga-is-like-religion/feed/0what is wild?http://earthwidetribe.com/what-is-wild/
http://earthwidetribe.com/what-is-wild/#respondSun, 14 May 2017 20:40:44 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1673a week in the wild

no thing mild

a world reconciled

There’s a story of relativity I have, in my mind, attributed to Einstein. Someone asks him to explain the relativity of time & he says, It’s simple—compare a minute with a pretty girl & a minute with your hand in a fire. Or something like that. Tribute to the effectiveness of our week in the wild was that, at the end of it, one of the consistent feedback points from the participants was the desire to extend it. Many of us felt we had just begun to get our rhythm and settle into the terrain—of the landscape & of the impromptu community—as well as our own unfolding place in both, when it was suddenly time to gather ourselves back up to be reinserted into “society”.

Now, rootless in the “normal” world, our week in the wild has sideswiped my perceptions of what “wild” even is. Untamed. Ah, but didn’t Le Petit Prince work magic on my wild resistance to being tamed?

Who wouldn’t want to consider themselves Wild? Yet is anyone, really? The flabby drunken boys on my flight into England, were they really wild? Instinctively I knew they wouldn’t survive in the wild. The Harley riders anywhere in the world, are they wild? The gang members? The “crazy” ones? Who, & what, defines wild? One of the very first questions I asked at the start of PocaHauntUs was,

“How can we call ourselves civilized when women & children still live in fear?”

This labeling of wild or savage at this point in time is an interesting one, but 4 to 5 hundred years ago it was a crucial one. It determined a genocide. By labeling indigenous people savage, a synonym for wild, we humans were able to savagely decimate 95% of them (as estimates go). I say ‘we’ because I was/am both. The killer & the killed. The hunter & the hunted. How do I reconcile that? By spending a week in the wild? Certainly not. Though it’s a start.

For how else do we cultivate a relationship than by dedicating time & space to learning the language(s) of the Other?

Worlds collide. This is what happened, is happening still. It could have been otherwise—a conversation, a dance—but it was a collision. While waiting in line to board the plane to England, I desperately searched my databanks of how to best manage this particular iteration of the pattern where 3 lads threw verbal abuse at women generally. Each slander cut me to the quick. Each lash of “cunt” I felt physically, like the reverberation of a specific rape. I’m sure this sounds extreme, like I’m the epitome of sensitivity to take it so deeply.

After yesterday spent on the ground in England, at the Borough Market & then along the Thames by the Tate, that internalized reaction boarding the plane was mild. How else to explain this than to say I am like a sensitized wild animal who feels everything, who is programmed for survival to sense everything. I’m clearly in the wrong environment, this urban one that provides a continual, relentless & numbing onslaught to my senses.

When I came to England last year to visit a dear friend, & also to visit Gravesend where Pocahontas had died–or was killed–while waiting for the tides to change (a meta-metaphor if ever there was one) so she could return to her homeland, I felt some of the same shock & awe. I fully admit it’s absurd to diss an entire nation based on 2 instances of entrance into it & on an imagined mirroring of an ancestral pattern playing out yet again. The Disney Pocahontas sequel, as racist & unskillfull as it was, had at least succeeded in showing me how foreign & uncivilized the “civilized” world of England was in 1620/1. If you’ve come from the “wild”, which word originates from wold, meaning woods or forest, where your connection to nature never wasn’t, an anthill of humans who don’t bathe in the river every day is not only smelly, it’s highly suspect. How far are we now from the levels of artifice & jostling for position that Lady Rebecca, as Pocahontas was renamed, would have seen at the king & queen’s court? This is what I saw everywhere at the market yesterday & it called up panic in me, maybe because underneath the cool facade of so many fashionably-shod consumers gobbling up the goodies & doubling up the rubbish, there was also panic—a low-level panic to eat more.

Acting has given my plastic face an outlet to express all the levels of horror & grace humanity can harbor, but yesterday in public I couldn’t keep my face from showing the horror I felt. Several times my friends reminded me, with their kindness, that others might see the horror on my face.

Yet I felt invisible, like Pocahontas in that horribly inaccurate Disney sequel that I had to shut off because it was so offensive. But I did relate to how they portrayed her—more like any other animal-creature artfully skimming up & down trees, in & out of view, more wild than “civilized.” And truly, if civilized means anxious, alcoholic, angry, egomaniacally desperate to “get ahead,” then lord may I never be tamed. For so many of my people have been. Somewhere in the enormously cathartic & challenging process of writing this play, I realized I was siding with the “good” side & somehow conveniently forgetting there was just as much, & perhaps more, of the “bad” side in my blood. That became part of the ending—me owning ALL of it. And maybe it was that willingness to show up to all of it that made it so very much like a rebirth, where I felt spewed out into the world anew, virtually a tabula rasa. Virtually, but not quite, since I still had all my old tricks–words, costumes, sets, identities–to play with.

I am all of it, and none of it.

So feeling my heart thumping & my anger rising in response to these boys boarding the plane, who were now including me in their taunting because I had dared to turn around & face them. My intention was to be neutral & simply witness them, as it was glaringly apparent that they wanted attention, but even that was aggravating. I was at a loss. How can I effectively transform this situation? I thought of Non-Violent Communication & of loving action. Others around me were throwing glances around, yet no one was DOing anything. I felt like a tattling child telling the flight attendant that the boys about to board were a problem. Could I not do something myself? Being antagonistic would only strengthen their antagonism, I felt. Somewhere in my recent activism training I’d read that violent action stems from a lack of imagination. In that case I felt like a dim dolt. I considered striding up to the loudest one in the middle & hugging him, but then thought he’d only convert this to his dark misogynistic purposes.

I was failing as an activist.

On the plane they kept up their loud, offensive yammering even when a young, slight, & brown British girl matched their white-boy cursing. She told them in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t pipe down their drunken pathetic selves, she’d have them taken out when we reached London. I admired her pep, was awed at her seeming lack of concern for her own safety & wondered if she did indeed have a family of fighters to back her up. I imagined a team of big brothers who met her at every airport she alighted upon. But this only added fire to their fire, although it did have the effect of galvanizing others to step up against them. An older pink-faced man in glasses asked them to be quiet, which they rudely denied. Finally, as in school, the main culprit was taken up front, tucked behind a curtain & told that if he didn’t behave he’d be off the plane. When he returned my hackles rose higher—his new manners were an obvious ruse & made me far more nervous than his overt rudeness had.

Caged wildness is not tamed wildness, as we like to think.

Just like suppressed emotion is not safe emotion.

We’re blatantly not facing the beast here.

This particular loutish version of a beast promptly fell into a drunken snore as the plane leveled out, which gave his sidekicks excuse to climb over the backs of their seats, endowing them an outlet to express their own wildness. Their untame-ability. Which I also understand. Who, at heart, wants to be so damn civilized? Who doesn’t want to feel a sense of wild autonomy? But how do we do that as individuals without trampling all over everyone else’s freedom, human & otherwise?

Truly I did not mean to talk so much about them, but about the remarkable week in the wild I had. There’s something here though in these boys, & perhaps in all rebellious people. Something about how we have un-wilded our world. Where, for most people, the only real predators are those of our own kind. I don’t think many people think of this as odd, but to me this is frightening. Not the frightening that comes from feeling threatened by a rowdy drunkard or a gang member or a horny frat boy, but the frightening that comes from the dilution, & even extinction, of how we experience reverence, which is awe mixed with a little fear. How often do you feel there is something larger than yourself? There’s a general elegiac feeling that comes through spiritual practices, but I’m talking more about the fear-instilled feelings of reverence that come from immersion in the wild, where the wild things still roar. Where, without the skills to build fire, purify water, create warm shelter & find food, all our righteous roaring will get us nowhere fast.

After yet another heartbreak, I came to realize that a week in the wilds of Barcelona, touring museums & hunting down Gaudi on my own would not be as fulfilling as applying whatever navigation & survival skills I already had to expanding upon these essential skills (that I didn’t even know I needed to know) in the woods with strangers. Unlike the beautiful strangers of the city, with whom I would not likely dive any deeper than skin-deep–since modern beauty rarely survives the depths & instead thrives on the superficial–I realized that it would be a far greater challenge for my broken-open heart to live in intimate space & collaboration with 15 other humans.

Wild Camp. A bit of both in that. A bit of the untamed, married to the settled. The settled to the settler. And isn’t this most of us, at the heart of our ancestry? The colonized & the colonizer? The one Of the environment & the one trampling all Over the environment?

I’ve begun to realize why I can’t finish my book yet—I’m still learning what it means to “come home to your own sweetness, your own home.” These few days in London I’ve been staying with my Spanish friend, her American husband & their two girls born & raised in England. The theme while I’ve been with them is:

‘You don’t have a home?’

They can’t grasp what I’m trying to indicate—that my home is me. I tell them I’m like a snail. There’s a faint flicker of recognition, but the chant of “no home, no home” pulls stronger. There’s a child-like panic in all of us. I am touching on a deep fear, that also fascinates. If I don’t have a home, then home is not a given. They, too, could be homeless. It could happen. I watch carefully for signs of panic, impatience & grief arising within me, while I continue to field their repetitive & persistent disbelief.

The day spent navigating the hoards of parasitic, mindless consumers at the market has left me washed out, full of dread & devoid of hope, like I’ve just faced off an entire city of ravenous zombies & survived, but only barely. And there’s still tomorrow. The zombies are still out there. Yet how much are they “in here”? I wonder. How much zombie am I? How can I be so judgmental without somehow judging myself?

This marriage between male & female that happens at the hips, it’s for all of us to do, including me. And it’s why I haven’t been able to finish my book. These tough teachings of life are leading me to some sort of literary resolution though. I can feel it arising slowly. Soon, soon I will feel in my own bones an on-going dance between the ancestral lines that draw up from my feet, through my legs & then come to meet (or not) in my pelvis. This main physical juncture, as well as the one where the arms & neck/head extend out from the shoulders, are where most people site trouble & dis-ease in their bodies. I’m convinced that until we start clearing out the lineages that feed us–by healing what we may not even consider is ours to heal–we will forever wobble & hobble in the world. And our wildness will not be reconciled. We have work to do. Celebrations sure, yet until we make the underlying shifts, the seeming celebrations will exacerbate the dissonance between the surface cheer & the subterranean traumas we can no longer afford to ignore.

The symptoms of sickness are everywhere. My face in the market was horror & disbelief. How do I convey this to you without sounding like I’m the crazy one? There was a feeding frenzy happening, not just on dead animals delivered in an excess of environment-taxing packaging, but with cameras as well. Everywhere, everyone attempting to capture something. Anything. No one looking deeply satisfied. Only a disturbing combination of bored & hungry, even while overweight & heavily entertained.

with Lindsay Alderton at EcoDharma

My friend at EcoDharma had warned me to be careful out here in the wider world, in London—to take care of myself after 6 weeks in the rarefied environment of relative meditative stillness there, & especially with my particular strain of open-heartedness. I had brazenly replied that I’d spent far more time in this Being than the years she’d known me & that I could handle it. AND she was right. Both happened. I can, & am, handling it. But roughly.

My friends here have looked after me, like one of their own young girls. In the middle of the mayhem of the market the father says, ‘I love you Melissa’. A few moments later he realizes that I’m crying, but he doesn’t realize that it was his care that turned those tears on. In a maelstrom of mindlessness, his kindness & protectiveness are the kind of fatherly love I have all-ways craved in full, yet only had in small snippets. And this is key to the marriage in my hips as well. I took on the role of father & protector with my mother. I was the good husband. Recently I’ve seen & understood an astrological signature for this when I studied the mythology of some asteroids. With Juno prominent in my public arenas, I show a staunch face when it comes to promoting women & protecting them. There is nothing wrong in this.

What requires balancing is the softer, more tender sides. And it was those sides that had felt free to emerge while at EcoDharma, the way a wild woodland creature would do when the crashing-about of humans has subsided. With 6 weeks in the ear-ringing silence of the Catalunyan cliffs, broken only by cuckoos &, later in the season, nightingales, & sometimes the dark & startling snuffle of a wild boar, I had been tamed by the timeless. My own wild heart had ventured forth, showing itself in abandoned laughter as well as unbrooked grieving, all witnessed by these strangers I’d stepped into the wilderness with. Who each had their own luggage to sift through, their own dialectical dramas to undo, to re-wild themselves.

What, for you, is wild?

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/what-is-wild/feed/0firekeeper & völvahttp://earthwidetribe.com/firekeeper-volva/
http://earthwidetribe.com/firekeeper-volva/#commentsThu, 20 Apr 2017 22:07:20 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1639When I went to my first traditional sweatlodge, I wore a red bandana to keep the anticipated sweat out of my eyes. I quickly learned that only firekeepers wear a red bandana, so I had to take it off. This week here at EcoDharma I have taken on the job of lighting the small stovepipe stove in the meditation yurt each morning.

Even though it’s nearly May, we’re pretty high up & this morning there was frost on the ground, plus everyone is sitting stock still in silent meditation so it’s helpful to have a small, central fire to take the chill off the air.

This seems like a particularly fitting job to be asked to do the week of my birthday. I’m a whole lot of warrioress fire (astrologically), as anyone knows who’s lived with me or taken classes with me. I burn bright & long, before I burn out. And, yes, this has been my lifelong tendency–to burn mySelf out. You’re never too old to learn, I reckon. So these last few days of the sun in the first fire sign of Aries, I’ve been learning how to start, & also sustain, a fire.

Which makes me think of the word I came across when researching for a short screenplay I wrote last October–amadou, also known as tinder-fungus for its use in starting slow-burning fires. This screenplay poured out of me, or perhaps I would more accurately say it poured through me. It was a coming together of many things, not least my recent exposure to Iceland. Because I was under the impression it would actually be produced, & quickly, there was nothing stopping it from coming. As it turned out, it wasn’t produced & the dynamic around that deep disappointment & relationship strife was another learning opportunity… I’ve since debated about what to do with it. Perhaps I’ll include it here, as a story for you, dear reader…

The reason this word amadou came to mind today was because I thought of how easy we have it now. Versus nomadic people & how incredibly valuable fire was/is to them in the places & times before electric, gas, water, wind, &/or solar power. Fire was how they survived. Without fire they would freeze & starve. So the firekeeper who kept the embers alight as s/he travelled to the next encampment held a huge responsibility for the entire clan. Imagine.

It is said that the firekeepers for the sweatlodge must build the fire in such a good way that it can be lit with one match, or not be lit at all! All the healing of all those gathered depends on the skills of the firekeepers, not just to light it, but to keep it burning correctly so the stones heat with minimal cracking & the length of the lodge can be reached. And here I am feeling the pressure from my little task this week to light this wee stovepipe stove in the dark, in time for the air to warm, without filling the yurt with smoke, & with enough wood to last the 90 minutes everyone sits in blanketed silence. So I can only imagine what it must be like to hold the embers alive over the many miles all-your-people travel. I admit I use more than one match, but I’m aiming–by week’s end–to get it down to just 1, if I can. These are the skills I relish learning these days & the skills I would have loved to have learned decades ago. Never too late, I say.

What is fire anyway? The fire of life that we could not live without. The fire of the sun that makes life on this planet possible at all. The fires of all life–of the plants we eat (or if you eat animals, that they eat & then you eat). And let’s not forget the fires of passion.

Passion & action come easily to some & feel more foreign to others. As I said, fire comes easily to me. I’m all about action. You have a dream, let’s DO it! Nike’s slogan was created by someone like me, I’m guessing. Someone is feeling down, my first words are, “Anything I can do?” Which is partly why I think of myself as more masculine (if I’m going to play with those gender generalizations at all, that is), because my first response is to solve the seeming-problem. I have to consciously work at being patient enough to simply be present for the person, & listen.

I tend to burn mySelf out–& also burn others out–with my zeal. I also, in a mundane, everyday way, tend to burn food. I do best when I have many, many things to make & do in the kitchen. Give me a feast to fashion & I’m your gal. That way I can be like an octopus with a tentacle in 6 or 7 different pots at once, fully occupied. Otherwise, I get distracted, leave the fire burning & come back to smoke & char.

There’s so much learning in this life. My mom has turned me on to Kaypacha Lescher, who I think of as “the Jack Nicholson of Astrology”. He cracks me up with his accent, his phrases, his seemingly-stoned demeanor & giggling. His latest post for this week has this mantra in it:

“Life is an education,
Drawing ME out of me,
And the more I am able to deal with,
The more I will set myself free.”

(It’s a lot of astrology jargon for those unfamiliar, but I was startled to hear him reference this time as the snake shedding its skin, which made me feel right on track, & you might find some gems in that post of his.)

So many times I have felt that ME, my fire, burns too brightly for folks. They’ve tried to dowse me, put me out, shut me up, quieten me down. It’s no wonder the majority of film & theatre roles I’ve played have been demons, killers, mad women, & larger-than-life archetypes. When people hear I was in The Hobbit, they assume I played an Elf. Nope. I was an Orc. In Avatar, I must have been a Na’vi. Nope, I was on the bad guy side. Yup, I was never destined to play the gentle ingenue. Not with all this fire powa. However, I can be gentle. I can be timid. I can be tender & also tenderized by life’s vicissitudes & humanity’s violences. And sometimes I do get dowsed by the down-ness of it all & my fire seems to be out.

Those are the times I’ve come to rely on the other firekeepers in the tribe.

This past year has been a tough one. (You’ve probably noticed we’re in tough times. Times they are a-changin’ dramatically & we’ve entered Stage Right just in time to play out the climactic denouement of the show.) My partner broke with me on my birthday last year, via skype, with no clear reason other than he realized he didn’t love me. That hurt & my poor mom, who I was visiting, had to watch me feel the pain of that. I am constantly amazed by the power of mothers to love their children as much, or more, than life itself & yet have to stand aside & allow their children to grow through whatever challenges arise. She has all-ways been my biggest fan. Literally, she has been the one who has fanned my flames back alight. For her, I am forever grateful.

I also feel fortunate that I have words to weave my learnings into. Some folks have movement. Some have music, some commerce, some medicine, some meditation. For me, words have been my go-to since I wrote my first poem about age 7 after we returned from the ashram.

This past year, though, about 6 months after the hurt, anger & disbelief from this break, but also from the wider realization of how the world has been breaking apart & revealing its shadows more & more, this vision came through me.

Of course, the protagonist is me & I had thought I would get to act out this role on film. I thought I would create for myself a truer, more nuanced role than that of ingenue, bitch, or foil to play off ‘the man’, which are the usual acting roles women have to choose from. And I love how the word for one who has visions–who sees what has been, what is & what will be–how that word from Old Norse into Modern Icelandic sounds like part of the female anatomy. Völva.

It’s also true, though, that the Modern Woman protagonist is so very, very many people these days, whatever your gender identification. I know there are lots of adjustments being made to our understandings of gender, but in the traditional sense of that-which-is-feminine, I have all-ways felt a sense of championing–of empowering & protecting–the female. But whatever way you know yourSelf, if this piece below resonates for you, I can only say that there IS a way. There is all-ways a way. And the more we stand together, as we grow individually, the more we support one another in not only surviving, but thriving & enlivening the journey of carrying the embers of the much-needed fire into the next encampment. Know who your firekeepers & völvas are, for it is they who will aid you in seeing in the dark & staying lit.

UpRising, or Re-Völva

24 Sept 2016, version 2

Transmute poison into potion, darkness into light, lead into gold.

7 pages, 7 minutes, 7 chakras

…

Fire/Will:

Nearing sunset, fog. Then flame.

The sun turns black / Sól tér sortna,

earth sinks in the sea / sígr fold í mar,

The hot stars down / hverfa af himni

from heaven are whirled / heiðar stjörnur,

(Völuspá verse 57)

…

We hear the verse, but Modern Woman does not. To her it could be the wind, the water, sounding.

She wears a jade amulet, but is otherwise unkempt and hopeless, dead inside.

With bare feet and arms she seems fragile, vulnerable.

She hauls a cement block into a boat and launches the boat out into the currents of the water.

She gets wet as she clambers in, but clearly doesn’t care.

Once the boat is adrift, she ties the block tightly to her ankle.

She sits and stares, feeling alone in the world.

Yet there are ancestors all about her—in the water, on the shoreline, and in the woods—

only she cannot see them. Not because of the fog/steam rising off the water, but because she cannot see the beauty and

brilliance of what she is and what is visible all around her, so she cannot see what is beyond the visible.

What gives rise to the visible is not yet real to her.

…

Fierce grows the steam / geisar eimi

and the life-feeding flame / við aldrnara,

Till fire leaps high / leikr hár hiti

about heaven itself / við himin sjálfan.

(verse 57 continued)

…

She looks at her hands, her arms and her legs, as though from a great distance—

as though she has already left this body and it’s not hers—while she smokes her last cigarette.

Close-up view of her amulet.

She tosses the lit match into the river, which turns into flame, as a result of fracking.

Startled out of her suicide to save herself, she pulls back from the fire,

gets the boat to shore and tries to flee, but finds she’s still anchored to the cement block.

…

Air/Heart:

Green of all growing things.

…

Now Garm howls loud / Geyr nú garmr mjök

before Gnipahellir / fyr Gnipahelli,

The fetters will burst / festr mun slitna,

and the wolf run free / en freki renna;

(verse 58)

…

In panic, as the fire moves across the water towards her,

she manages to free herself and takes off, at speed, into the forest.

Running as though pursued, as though running away from,

which becomes running towards, she rises up in her stride.

Breathing again—coming alive through legs working, lungs working,

her fearful heart becomes bold, enlivened heart.

There is a sense of shedding time as she moves through the forest.

She is becoming part of the world again with each step—like “the wolf run free.”

Ancestors are visible and she starts to think she sees something, but only in glimpses,

as part of her fear, but then as spur to her path.

Until she exhausts herself and collapses

onto the earth, into the earth—is enveloped in it, embraced by it.

Soothed and strengthened simultaneously.

…

Space/Truth:

Sound restores strength.

Her breathing becomes crying which turns into wailing, into keening—

a more rhythmical and confident expression of sorrow—

then it becomes song.

The fetter on her foot was burst, and now the vocal, emotional, psychological fetters also burst.

Her voice is freed like an animal that has no self-consciousness.

Before now she would have thought she was crazy and any observer might think the same,

but instead it’s clear she is channeling

as the ancestors that appear are giving her these sounds. They are sounding through her.

Her sound becomes a rhythmic song, a plea, an anthem,

as she begins to beat in time to it on the earth,

Völva, the seeress, is called up from her grave.

The setting sun shoots through the trees,

creating a halo behind the risen Völva and momentarily blinding the Modern Woman.

Ancestors become more visible and also more audible.

…

An ash I know / Ask veit ek standa,

Yggdrasil its name / heitir Yggdrasill

With water / white hár baðmr,

is the great tree wet / ausinn hvíta auri;

Thence come the dews / þaðan koma döggvar

that fall in the dales / þærs í dala falla;

Green by Urth’s well / stendr æ yfir grœnn

does it ever grow. / Urðar brunni.

(verse 19)

…

Are these words now coming from Völva, from all the ancestors, or is all-the-world speaking?

Her own breathing has aligned with the rhythm of the verse.

Modern Woman is stunned, initially frightened by this presence.

This is something she could not have believed-in before now. But now she cannot deny it.

She is calmed and compelled by it all.

…

Light/Seer:

Clear seeing creates the confidence to act.

night sets in, moon comes out, lighting is other-worldly

Völva speaks—that the way of the world as it is now must die and a new world be born

…

A hall I saw, far from the sun / Sal sá hon standa sólu fjarri

On Nastrond it stands / Náströndu á,

and the doors face north / norðr horfa dyrr;

Venom drops / falla eitrdropar

through the smoke-vent down / inn um ljóra,

For around the walls / sá er undinn salr

do serpents wind. / orma hryggjum.

(verse 38)

I saw there wading / Sá hon þar vaða

through rivers wild / þunga strauma

Treacherous men / menn meinsvara

and murderers too, / ok morðvarga

And workers of ill / ok þann er annars

with the wives of men; / glepr eyrarúnu;

There Nithhogg sucked / þar saug Niðhöggr

the blood of the slain, / nái framgengna,

And the wolf tore men; / sleit vargr vera.

would you know yet more? / Vituð ér enn – eða hvat?

(verse 39)

…

This last line is clearly a question Modern Woman must answer.

She is afraid, yet nods.

Völva continues.

…

The giantess old in Ironwood sat, / Austr sat in aldna í Járnviði

In the east, / and bore ok fæddi

the brood of Fenrir; / þar Fenris kindir;

Among these one in monster’s guise / verðr af þeim öllum einna nokkurr

Was soon to steal the sun from the sky. / tungls tjúgari í trölls hami.

(verse 40)

There feeds he full on the flesh of the dead, / Fyllisk fjörvi feigra manna,

And the home of the gods he reddens with gore; / rýðr ragna sjöt rauðum dreyra;

Modern Woman nods, manages to stand, and then moves forward, as though to walk through Völva.

…

Thought/Unity:

Transcendence of personality.

Modern Woman merges with Ancestral Woman/Völva and is given her instruments to wield—

wand, drum, seeds, amadou, armband. She realizes she needs to give something and so she removes and offers her jade amulet

to Völva who only smiles and folds the Woman’s fingers back over it instead.

(Woman will come to know that it is meant to return to Source, to the waters.)

…

Thence come the maidens / Þaðan koma meyjar

mighty in wisdom, / margs vitandi

Three from the dwelling / þrjár, ór þeim sal

down ‘neath the tree; / er und þolli stendr;

Urth is one named, / Urð hétu eina,

Verthandi the next, / aðra Verðandi,

On the wood they scored, / skáru á skíði,

and Skuld the third. / Skuld ina þriðju;

Laws they made there, / þær lög lögðu,

and life allotted / þær líf kuru

To the sons of men, / alda börnum,

and set their fates. / örlög seggja.

(verse 20)

On all sides saw I / Sá hon valkyrjur

Valkyries assemble, / vítt of komnar,

Ready to ride / görvar at ríða

to the ranks of the gods; / til Goðþjóðar;

Skuld bore the shield, / Skuld helt skildi,

and Skogul rode next, / en Skögul önnur,

Guth, Hild, Gondul, / Gunnr, Hildr, Göndul

and Geirskogul. / ok Geirskögul.

Of Herjan’s maidens / Nú eru talðar

the list have ye heard, / nönnur Herjans,

Valkyries ready / görvar at ríða

to ride o’er the earth. / grund valkyrjur.

(verse 30)

Now Garm howls loud / Geyr nú garmr mjök

before Gnipahellir / fyr Gnipahelli,

The fetters will burst, / festr mun slitna,

and the wolf run free; / en freki renna;

Much do I know, and more can see / fjölð veit ek fræða,

Of the fate of the gods, / fram sé ek lengra

the mighty in fight. / um ragna rök römm sigtíva.

(verse 58)

…

Earth/Roots:

Fertilized to grow from victim to victor.

As she walks from the forest into the field and towards the water, Woman throws seeds down from her pouch.

From each planting of seeds a woman emerges, naked or nearly so. One by one, out of the landscape, women spring up

like flowers. Each woman picks her bleeding heart up off the ground, lifts it to her bare chest, leaving a mark of blood,

then holds it aloft,

blood running down her arm.

Each seedling-woman is accompanied by an ancestor, a guide, human or animal.

Woman’s voice and Völva’s have merged. The story is the same, but more modern in sound now.

…

Brother kills brother,

Sons betray their kin:

Axe-age, sword-age,

Wind-age, wolf-age.

Water spirits dance

As destiny burns.

A ship comes from the East

Bearing agents of death,

Sun blackens, Earth crumbles,

Stars tumble from heaven,

Fire laps the Ash,

Flames lick the sky.

Another green Earth

Will rise from the sea.

I see eagles over fells,

Sporting for fish.

Crops will grow unseeded;

Ills healed, Baldr returns

The black dragon flies,

Over dark-of-moon hills,

Bearing corpses to Hel.

Where I must go too.

…

Water/Values:

Blood of my body, blood of the earth—taking responsibility for the water within and without.

At the water’s edge, Woman drums as they all face the rising sun.

The black dragon rises up from the depths of the water and looms,

as though to strike them all down.

Woman recognizes the sacrifice that must be made and the relationship that must be established.

She hands off her drum, takes off her amulet, steps into the water calmly, without fear.

She tosses the amulet into the dragon’s mouth.

The amulet transforms into the suicidal form of the woman, a corpse of who she was, held in the dragon’s teeth.

As the dragon takes in the medicine of the amulet, it turns from black to green and then softens down into the waters.

The dragon’s back becomes a new earth. Eagles fly above.

END

…

And also a beginning. It’s a cycle, a spiralic cycle like an eagle riding a thermal. If you’ve done MYOGA Seasons with me, you will have noticed the structure of this piece is aligned with where we step in at Manipura/First Summer & roll through to Svadisthana/Brightest Spring, as a way of entering the spiral. Again, if this struck a chord in you, I’d love to hear from you. And PLEASE, be mindful of what has come through me here. While we can wax philosophical about how nothing new is ever created, this particular alignment of images-through-words is something that I have written down. Part of the trauma last October was that portions of the story felt like they were taken, instead of it being understood & allowed to come-to-be in their entirety, as I’d written it, & with me actively involved in the production. So I trust that if you wish to make this into a film, you’ll do me the honor of including me in my own story, yes?

Here’s a great musical version of the Voluspá & an introduction to the greater cyclical meaning it holds. It’s lovely to hear this language & its epic, other-worldly quality…

]]>http://earthwidetribe.com/firekeeper-volva/feed/2the good folks of the EarthWideTribehttp://earthwidetribe.com/the-good-folks-of-the-earthwidetribe/
http://earthwidetribe.com/the-good-folks-of-the-earthwidetribe/#respondMon, 17 Apr 2017 13:15:47 +0000http://earthwidetribe.com/?p=1623I woke this Sunday morning (some call Easter, a time of being reborn), with the realization that I am now ready to feature you all! And please do read that with a Southern accent. Those of you who’ve practiced with me on the mat, or who may have had a drink with me years ago when I was still drinking, know I can have a tendency to go South with my voice. Even though I didn’t grow up there, it’s in my blood going back hundreds of years, & I was born there, so maybe that’s enough for it to slip out during high spells of teaching focus or inebriated un-focus!

So, this is a short post to simply announce that I am very excited to start highlighting those in the EarthWideTribe who are willing to be highlighted. I realize not everyone wants to be public so this will be selective & also individualized. I will adjust how it’s done, & what’s discussed, based on what feels best for each person. No pressure. AND I’d love for YOU to be present here.

This idea started to percolate in me during a discussion with my soul-sistah Tink just before I left NZ this last time, in February this year. She had a friend over who had recently been to a service commemorating the life of a man who had greatly & positively influenced the community. This friend was commenting on the many amazing things people said about the recently deceased. I have noticed how often we don’t say the good things we think & feel about one another–how we’ve grown & evolved from knowing one another–when, perhaps, they could most benefit from them, i.e.–while they’re still alive. So right then & there I said to Tink that one of the things her presence in my life has taught me is the value of relationships. Through being who she is, she has taught me how to show up & to care overtly for others like they are family. Thus, as only children we have come to adopt one another as sisters, or sistahs as I like to spell it.

Of course tears came to my eyes as I said this & they do again as I write it now. It’s a heart breaking experience to admit I love someone. But I’m now willing to break my heart open, & stand in the awkwardness of that, so you may know my love for you.

So you may know how much magic you bring to the world, just by existing.

First up, is my mom/Moom/mum/maman. Without her I wouldn’t exist at all. Obvious as that is, honoring our parents is not all-ways the most automatic, easy or loving thing to do. It can be much of our life’s work to even reach that place…

In the midst of emptying out my heart, I try to remind myself of this balancing wisdom. On Good Friday, ancestrally not such a good day, I had opened myself to a process with this phrase in mind:

“May all that is not rightfully mine be released from me, & may all that IS rightfully mine be returned to me.”

It may very well be still working its work on me today. Perhaps the seemingly endless tears are simply the flood of all that is not rightfully mine being released. And maybe, as well, they are the tears of homecoming for all that IS rightfully mine. For much of my grief these days, this past year, feels centred in gratitude. I often feel so grateful for loved ones–their love of me that nearly astonishes me–& my love & appreciation of them (though I’m sure I don’t show it enough) that I am overflowing, verklemt.

Verklemt has a sort of pain in it that I can relate to, while effulgence has a sort of elegiac radiance in it that I’d like to relate to. Both describe the overflow that I feel from my heart into the world. Although I have to admit I generally feel safer keeping myself to myself in these sensitive moments. Which is not so easy when you’re living in community. Today my best bet to have space & time to feel into it all was to lay down next to a trickling stream & cry into the straw, admiring the ants for their patient, hard work. Making note to do the same. Patience, I whisper to myself, & then cry some more. Nearly every description of Aries I’ve come across has admonished me to develop patience, so it feels like one of those super-powas that is also my downfall. I can have heroic moments of patience that are marvelled at by others which are then quickly followed by heroic levels of impatience, mostly with myself.

For example, this pattern of being attracted to men who can’t meet me (for some reason, & believe me I have encountered nearly every reason imaginable in my vast search) & jumping impatiently into relationship with yet another man I am convinced will be “the one”, the mate to match me, to dance through the world with me, to co-create family with me. And because I have not been patient enough to do due diligence on the claims–both his & mine, I discover I have stepped into yet another incarnation of the same pattern. It’s enough to raise the white flag, if only I could. If I could really & truly give up it would likely all fall into place so much faster. That’s what people say–when you give up & get on with other things, that’s when Life surprises you with exactly what you’ve been pining for. But I can’t pretend to give up. And, as it turns out, I have a stubborn streak. My web guy has even called me ‘as stubborn as a mule’. When I am convinced something is possible, I can’t let it die until it comes to be. Or I’m exhausted into surrender.

I mentioned Good Friday/Easter weekend has not been her-storically a good time. This was when Lady Rebecca, as Pocahontas/Matoaka had been renamed by the colonists (who had abducted & apparently raped her), died. In Gravesend, England, which I visited last year. Took a train out from London, a city I had an extreme allergic reaction to–literally. I found Gravesend dismal, befitting its name. The church was locked. The statue of Pocahontas matched the one in Jamestown, Virginia with her open-handed gesture of innocence, peace. Elderly folk & a few odd fellows walked through the church grounds that otherwise looked like they were used for various addictions. It rained not too long after I finally found a corner of the yard with enough overgrowth to do the water song for her, for this place where her remains had been interred, without seeming any odder than the other vagrants.

Exactly 5 years after her death (no accident this timing, I am very sure) her uncle Uttamattamakin led a teaching tactic against the colonists, who saw it differently & called it the Easter Massacre. It wasn’t at all a massacre, though it easily could have been had the Powhatans decided to make it so. Instead they strategically attacked where the colonists had overstepped the bounds of land they’d been given. It was a teaching, a way of saying, “thus far & no farther.” Of course we all know how that turned out. The difference between warfare tactics that are tolerant & even respectful of the “enemy” & those that annihilate to the point of genocide…Yes, we all know how that one turned out.

And then 78 years ago my great-grandfather decided that the divorce his wife wanted for his unfaithfulness wasn’t going to wash. She had said “thus far & no farther” with his errant ways, so he answered with his rifle by annihilating her, & then himself, leaving their 6 children to be scattered to the four winds on Good Friday. Not such a good Friday, I say.

3 years ago I unpacked this ancestral baggage & came away from it reborn, free, like a newborn child with no way of clinging to identity, yet. It was an odd sensation for a 40 year old to be passed from person to person like an infant, to trust in the hands of the world, because, as it turned out, I ‘could do no other’, as the phrase came to be in my mind.

Something I found astoundingly affirmative in my research for this life-changing, skin-shedding show, was that the moment my great-grandfather Rolfe shot my great-grandmother Willie-Ann (& my mother’s 15 year old mother, Phyllis, witnessed it), the sun, moon & earth were in the same exact signs/constellations as they were when I was born–Sun in Aries, Moon in Scorpio & Earth’s horizon in Sagittarius. My birthday falls near Easter & in the past 4 years I’ve had 2 different Virgo partners drop me in terribly unskillful (as the Buddhists like to say) ways, within days of my birth-day.

So, even though I felt reborn for the first couple years after PocaHauntUs premiered, the past few years have aged me again. And, try as I might to release myself from all that has come before–all the way back those 13 generations–that no longer serves me, I still feel it. In the show I attempted to transmute ancestral poison into potion for present & future generations, but one of Leonard Cohen’s last lines of his life has been rattling melodically through my mind these days:

I heard the snake was baffled by his sin
He shed his scales to find the snake within
But born again is born without a skin
The poison enters into everything

One of my First Nation teachers/elders has Snake medicine in her totem, as do I. And she says it’s difficult medicine to have. Tell me about it. Tell me about your snakebites & I’ll tell you about mine. I can take some small comfort in the first line of Jamie Sams’ Medicine Card on Snake:

“Snake medicine people are very rare.”

I admit I like being rare, although it does have its disadvantages. Rare is also un-cooked, raw, like being born again without a skin. I get that. Recently an online student encouraged me to do the Myers-Briggs personality test & it turns out I’m rare there too, as an INFJ. Again, some small comfort is gained in being rarified, though a rarified atmosphere can be hard to breathe in…

“Snake is a reptile that is able to shed its skin and live through a traumatic life-death-rebirth experience…Their initiation involves experiencing and living through multiple snake bites, which allows them to transmute all poisons, be they mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional…The transmutation of the life-death-rebirth cycle is exemplified by the shedding of Snake’s skin. It is the energy of wholeness, cosmic consciousness, and the ability to experience anything willingly and without resistance. It is the knowledge that all things are equal in creation, and that those things which might be experienced as poison can be eaten, ingested, integrated, and transmuted if one has the proper state of mind.

Snake teaches you to recognize that you are an eternal being experiencing mortality, you are constantly shedding anything that has served its purpose, in favor of something which is of greater value.

Transmute all poisons. Shed the skin of the past. Honor the change in progress.”

Seeing my experience through this lens makes the reality of living this way slightly more bearable because it gives me an overview of the value of just such a transmutation processes. I like to imagine it like being Peter Parker bitten by the spider & going through horrible pain that then becomes tremendous power & resilience as he mutates into Spiderman. And while I have to step gingerly to keep from re-hashing these old stories & wearing out my good cheer in this lifetime, I also appreciate having the centuries-wide perspective that enables me to see the slow familial evolution at hand as it moves through “me” & my existence, this incarnation, this iteration of the snake after another shedding of its skin.

Have you ever watched a snake shedding its skin?

Apparently it is a terribly awkward & uncomfortable experience. If it’s a pet snake that is accustomed to being handled, at this time it may resist being handled. Its skin & eyes change color & its vision becomes cloudy. And it eats very little. Loved ones have often been perplexed, judgmental, even frustrated with my need to regularly hermit away. I can only point to snake & say, “It’s nothing personal. I’m in an awkward in-between stage & I just can’t see past my own process in these moments, literally.”

Truly, I am fortunate. My lovers may not be able to love me as I’d like them to & they may be unskillful in how they tell me so, but at least they haven’t poisoned me as Pocahontas’s people say she was killed by her husband John Rolfe in 1617. And at least they haven’t shot me in the head & neck with a .22, leaving me to bleed while they blow their own brains out. Leaving me to relatives who couldn’t care for me in my debilitated, though not-yet-dead, form, so that I spend my last days in a mental hospital even though I am perfectly sane, while my children, homeland, & belongings are given to others. My worst dramas still don’t compare to these traumas.

I am fortunate to be on the diminishing end of this spiralic unwinding of a snakebitten pattern.

My greatest puzzle is how to break the pattern before my body won’t be capable of procreation. How do I attract my rarefied mate, the one unafraid of snakes, their need to shed, or their occasional bites? Where is the one ready to dance into life with me, to co-create consciously, to be reborn from our relational refuge? Snake may be skinless, & therefore need swift speed to retreat & fangs to attack when cornered, but I have other comrades at my side. And they are the ones who will not let me let up on this ride we call Life. I rejoice. As my friend Asif taught me to know, “All praise is due.” In-deed.

May your Easter season be an opportunity to release what is not rightfully yours as well as what no longer serves you, so that you have room to reclaim–to welcome home–what IS rightfully yours. May you be born again, even if it is briefly without a skin.

Much love, PocaNose (as my Uncle John calls me for the nose I share with my illustrious ancestor whose life I dare to honor with how I live & love my own)